NEW DELHI: Ahead of the first India-U.S. Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in Washington later this month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has invited American businesses to invest in India and help meet the target of quintupling bilateral trade.
"Today, our ambitions are very high, to increase bilateral trade five-fold over the current levels," he said at the 11th economic summit organized by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.
"Both India and the U.S. are natural allies, both democracies. While the U.S. has the financial capital and advanced technology, India has a large body of trained manpower, natural resources and a large market," he added.
India is the second-largest source of foreign direct investment in the U.S., and the largest in Britain, the minister added. India-U.S. trade currently is worth $100 billion.
Jaitley said that ensuring a predictable taxation regime in India and improving ease of doing business "are works in progress," while efforts have been made to evolve a very "fair" taxation regime.
Jaitley said declining oil and other commodity prices in this phase of global financial turmoil has helped India as the country is a net importer of commodities.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Verma said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's forthcoming visit to the U.S., especially to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, has generated a lot of excitement as he will be the only second Indian prime minister to visit California after Jawaharlal Nehru.
Modi will also visit Facebook headquarters in California, the social networking site's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced.
Noting that a decade ago, the U.S. and India did very little defense trade, the envoy said his country has signed around $10 billion worth defense contracts with India.
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